


All of the Lilies on the Hill

by sleepdrunk



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Blanket Permission, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-07-30 19:26:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20102383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepdrunk/pseuds/sleepdrunk
Summary: The sun shines bright and sparkles on the surface of the river. A note falls from the sky and into Aziraphale’s lap.





	1. 1.

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter is rated gen, the rest of the work will be M or higher.

Aziraphale drags the heavy corpse to St. Michaels. 

He knows Crowley would hate the blood in the boot of the Bentley, but he’s not here. 

///

The church is dusty and empty, and he doesn’t quite know what he’s doing. He’s borne witness to many a death rite, yet in the moment, nothing comes to him. So Aziraphale hauls Crowley to the altar, limp in his arms; the soles of his leather shoes dragging on the floor. It would be a damned sight easier to miracle this, but that seems somehow blasphemous. Instead he lets his body sweat; the grime and dirt sticking to his furrowed brow and wounding his skin when he goes to wipe it away.

Body propped on the steps before the altar, the angel kneels in prayer, feeling the aching cold of the stone floor in his knees. 

He’ll have to make one more miracle, before he disappears for good. He snaps his fingers. Now, there is a tomb in the churchyard where there was none before, nestled under the hawthorn at the back of the yard.

///

The sun shines bright and sparkles on the surface of the river. A note falls from the sky and into Aziraphale’s lap.

_Angel,_

_I’m sorry it all had to end. Presumably it did, anyway. There’s no way you’d have come upon this missive, were we still careening about. I thought I’d have it all planned out, in the end, but a part of me always knew. Defenestrated— plop right out of Heaven, only to be snuffed out by Hell. Too bad, but we had fun— didn’t we?_

_Perhaps I’ll be among the stars now. Quite fitting. Buzz by one of my nebulas one day, won’t you? If there’s any essence of me left; any chunk of fertilizer left when I go supernova, that’s where I’ll go, and by Heaven, I’ll wait for you. _

///

Feeding ducks at the park one rainy day in June, Aziraphale looks down at his fingers. They’re a bit purpley from the freezing cold, sticking out of fingerless woolen gloves. He takes a generous pinch of grain from the bag he has with him and throws it to the ducks, who quack in approval. 

A hand on his shoulder startles him. 

“Time to get back to work, don’t you think?” The voice is deep, with a smile in it; and comes from someone much taller. Gabriel. 

He shivers; the damp works its way down through the layers in this weather. He turns his head. 

“Fuck off.”

The world shimmers. It appears that Aziraphale has just told a bush to fuck off, rather than the ascendent Archangel. The bush doesn’t even have the courtesy to burn, and several children and their minders have turned to stare at him. 

The thought had occurred to him— that, without Crowley there to plod around with, that he should give in and go home. He couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried. His hands couldn’t draw the sigils; his wings wouldn’t unfurl if that’s where he wanted them to take him. The thought of it, looking down on that big, blue globe— 

If God had so loved the world, he thinks angrily, perhaps she should have thought twice before leaving it in the care of a clutch of power hungry pricks. No, Aziraphale so loved the world. Crowley had so loved the world that he’d bothered to question God. 

No, with every summoning, Aziraphale tried to muster up the energy to fly home, and every time he failed. He’d end up sitting on the park bench he’d practically begun to call home, staring at the wide, lazy stream in front of him, and find that he simply could not return. His borrowed heart was too heavy.

///

There might not have been an apocalypse on earth, but there might as well have been for all the infrastructure that had been left in tact in Hell. Heaven had not fared much better. 

Someone had been angry with Crowley. Best Aziraphale could tell from both his own observations and his intelligence network, Crowley had been destroyed; the body left behind.

Aziraphale looked down at the corpse at his feet in disbelief.

The thought of returning to the life pre-Apocalyptic make his stomach turn, now that his body is prone to such mortal complaints. He knows without visiting that the dust intrinsic and un-dusterable to antique books will burn his eyes and remind him entirely too much of nights of wine and conversation and realization. He embarks on his journey with one leather suitcase and an ecru linen suit a bit worse for the wear. 

///

If returning to Heaven and all her endless duties had seemed an unsavoury task in the wake of the Apocalypse, then it was impossible now. 

For a while, Aziraphale searched endlessly with his mind for any hint of the demon Crowley. It was all for naught, though; he knew what his fate had been. Good intelligence had told him that Crowley had been ambushed by an agent of one called Hastur. He had stabbed Crowley through, using a blade quenched in holy water. 

After this revelation, the angel experienced nightmares for the first time. Images of Crowley’s face, shocked. Wide-eyed, not yet realizing what had happened, and looking down and clutching at the blade lodged in his guts and feeling the warm blood, and his eternal soul shattering; oozing out with it like glass shards stuck in molasses. 

He dreamt of the smiling black eyes above a snarl. A gnarled finger depressing the buzzer to Crowley’s flat; waiting, nasty pointed tongue cleaning pointed teeth, making a smacking sound that echoes in the hall. Biding his time. And then, with a smile, greeting his target. Shoving the blade through and through, meeting his shocked gaze. A body sliding down a doorway. Last gasps, and the snap of fingers to bring the limp corpse to Aziraphale’s now-ruined shoes. 

Night after night, Aziraphale wakes in a sweat. Every morning, he prays and meditates, using what little energy he had left on finding any trace of Crowley in the universe. Nothing.

///

As he had so many times before, the angel dons his favourite guise and becomes one Francis, presumably of Assisi. Ownership of his beloved bookshop is passed on to an order of nuns in need of space for homeless housing. Mother superior looks as if she might hit the floor. All he asks in exchange is that she store a rather extravagant car of a certain vintage.

The Angel moves on, and is entertained unawares. 

///


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Sitting there, starting at something he never let himself want, Aziraphale fidgets. As far as anyone knows in the tiny French village, they are English in need of rest and recuperation, like many in their company. In truth, the angel needs to rest following a certain miracle at Dunkirk. The demon in their company pretends in a memo to Hell that he is responsible for all of the _fornicatio _going on down at the village café in order to comfort his friend. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sadness and flashbacks and smut, oh my

2.

A gloomy fall becomes winter. In his hands, Aziraphale holds a soft-cover copy of _He Knew He Was Right_. On its cover is a plate detail of a painting which has nothing to do with the narrative, but conveys the theme nonetheless. He turns it over in his grasp, thumbing the pages; opening it to pages at random and reading paragraphs here and there. He smiles. The book itself feels happy, if a bit lonely. _Well,_ he thinks. _It’s loved now_.

“Mate? Saturday good?”

“Hmm?” Aziraphale looks up, cheeks hot. “Sorry, yes. Saturday. Th— thank you.” Regretfully, he sets the book back down on the low desk, faux-wood vinyl peeling off at the corners. “Ten?”

“Yeah.” The shop manager narrows his eyes a bit, no doubt wondering if he hadn’t just taken on a nutter. “Bit before that, to get the register sorted; make coffee and the like.” The ancient office chair creaks and grinds as he moves to stand, slowly and with the help of its armrests. “Well,” he extends his arm over the massive pile of books organized on the desk and shakes Aziraphale’s hand. “I’d best close up now.”

“You, er. Thank you. You won’t regret this.” He leaves the shop, missing the book already. Hopefully, his first shift would be terribly slow and he could read it in its entirety.

It’s a second hand place in a seaside town. It will do for now.

///

_“I wonder,_” he starts, toes wiggling in the sand. _“I wonder, how many people have ever prayed to a demon. Surely, I can’t be the first. There’s that church of Satan for a start. Got a good chuckle out of that one, I can tell you.”_

The cool water laps at his feet. It leaves little bubbles on his skin and they stick in the curly hair on the tops of his feet.

_“Christ might approve, at least. Praying where you are, and all that.” _It’s a grey day, and the sun, from behind his thick veil, is about to dip behind the horizon. Water soaks up the back of his linen suit pants and a distant part of him fears they’ll be permanently discoloured where they hit his heel. _“You’d hate it here. Absolutely nothing swanky.”_

A pair of gulls cry and take off from a ways down the shore.

_“There’s no use, is there?” _

Aziraphale closes his eyes and breathes deeply. The sea air rushes into his lungs, and he opens his heart; the feeling like a great release, like his ribs have opened like some great chest and released him. It’s a little dangerous-- his weak human body standing stock-still on a beach, completely unaware of the world around it-- but heaven isn’t likely to notice him. He sails above himself, above the great deep Atlantic. He busts apart, and is at least for this moment, a part of the great heavens once again, wings unfurled. Eyes, open to creation.

It’s a great and indescribable release-- but it breaks his heart.

Now, as ever, Crowley is nowhere to be found. No shred of him exists, not in any distant glistening nebula; nor hill nor dale, not any alien sun nor distant moon contains one shred of him.

The angel returns to his body and remains on the cold beach until the sun returns with the morning dew.

///

_They’re at a wedding, and it all feels a little too real._

_It is a wedding, and yet it must exist in exile. All of the guests sit on the ground, on wool blankets and cloaks and woven mats. It doesn’t appear that the war will end anytime soon, and two world-weary women who found each other in the service of the ladies auxiliary army decided to wed-- let the chips fall where they may._

_Sitting there, starting at something he never let himself want, Aziraphale fidgets. As far as anyone knows in the tiny French village, they are English in need of rest and recuperation, like many in their company. In truth, the angel needs to rest following a certain miracle at Dunkirk. The demon in their company pretends in a memo to Hell that he is responsible for all of the _fornicatio _going on down at the village café so that he can comfort his friend. _

_Azirapale’s chest is heavy and full all at once. He is no stranger to formality and respectful quiet, certainly, and yet he is deeply unsettled. The air is thick with love. He cannot escape it. He’s trapped in a sick kind of fully clothed nudity and he cannot cover himself. _

_"Lovely woman,_

_whom joy and noble speech uplift,_

_and merit, to you my stanzas go,_

_for in you are gaiety and happiness,_

_and all good things one could ask of a woman."[1]_

_He doesn’t dare cast a sideways glance at Crowley as the two women at the altar-- an ancient, mossy stone-- make these declarations and kiss and this church of the wild erupts into jubilation._

_He swallows, his throat tight, and smiles at the hand on his thigh-- a tight squeeze, and they’re standing, some rice getting lodged in his hair that’s still a little tacky from the spring rain._

_This isn’t fair._

_Aziraphale resents this all-consuming feeling. but now there’s moisture in his eyes and he’s happy for his friends but this is way too much._

_“All right, angel?” Crowley asks in his ear._

_He doesn’t answer._

_As the procession makes its furtive little way out of the grassy, overgrown castle ruins, he tries to breathe. Tries to make it go away. The brides slip away, against the flow of the crowd. They and their silk dresses, made from parachute silk, slip into the woods and away. He and Crowley make the trek back to the main village road and to the Bentley._

_They drive in silence and then Crowley isn’t going the right way, at all._

_“Detour?”_

_“In a manner of speaking,” Crowley replies; and before Aziraphale knows it, they’re parked at the side of a field in broad daylight, but it’s empty, and he’s half out of his clothes in the backseat, and they make the most of it._

_///_

_Crowley takes his prick in his hand; pumps him-- slowly. Tight. Torturous. Aziraphale thrusts into the grip and deepens the kiss._

_“I can’t do this anymore,” he says, and mouths Crowley’s ear._

_Crowley smiles. “‘Knew you were tense.” His words are light but his hands soothe Aziraphale’s sides._

_The angel grips the nape of Crowley’s neck, leveraging his knees so he can flip their bodies. He grinds down, and the conversation dies in hungry kisses._

_Fingers trace down Aziraphale’s spine. His back is slick with sweat, and he worries about his dress shirt now hanging off of his shoulders-- but Crowley’s hand rests at his waist, nestled in a valley between rising hills of muscle and fat._

_The deft, sure grip on his cock is still there; just enough. Aziraphale finds himself getting louder without his own permission, and he’s panting against Crowley’s neck, folded completely over him; balls trapped in his underwear and thrusting into his hand._

_He kisses Crowley’s cheek and turns and spits in his hand,._

_“It’s okay, c’mon--” Crowley says; sending chills down Aziraphales spine. He indulges himself and traces his free hand up and down between y’s cheeks and just over his hole. “Want--?”_

_Aziraphale nods furiously and hides his face against Crowley’s ear. He can’t support his own weight anymore; the heavy chest is back and it wants to be held, so he gives in. He brackets Crowley’s head with his elbows and focuses on the heavy feeling in the very base of his body, the need--_

_“Please. Yes. Come on--” and Aziraphale fucking hates to plead, but he needs this. He wants to come; he wants to fuck into Crowley’s hand and rub against his body and chase the release, but it would be so unfulfilling-- but he can’t ask, he can’t ask, he can’t ask--_

_“Of course you can ask, you can ask anything--”_

_“Shit,” he says into Crowley’s skin, burrowing his head deeper to avoid his seeking gaze and the smile he can feel creeping across his face._

_He wanted this. He was ready. Some part of him was always ready and that part was an automaton-- unfailingly readying himself in the shower anytime Crowley time was on the horizon. Doubly so if any form of suit was going to be involved._

_Before he knows it-- with a bit of twisting and reaching in the cramped back seat-- Crowley’s shoved his slacks down just far enough; his chest bare, and has a glob of vaseline that Aziraphale refuses to worry about getting on fancy clothes._

_His touch flutters over Aziraphale’s entrance, once, then twice, then just the tip of his middle finger- and Aziraphale is his for the taking._

_He works him quickly, and it’s going to be tight and Aziraphale just might be sore later, but he doesn’t fucking care._

_“I’m not gonna last long--”_

_“Longer’n me--”_

_Crowley hoists his heavy frame up and kisses him as he guides the head of his cock to his hole and presses inside-- slowly, by increments, and fists Aziraphale as he fills him. It burns for just a little bit but it’s something to focus on, and Aziraphale rolls his hips, finding a rhythm. _

_“C’mere-- c’mere-” Crowley cups his face and meets his eyes. He lets go of the angel’s cock and guides his hand to replace it, and takes him by the hips-- taking control; thrusting up just at the right angle._

_With a jolt, Aziraphale is coming into his hand and all over Crowley’s bare chest; filling the small space with shouts and whimpers. He hardly notices, but Crowley watches his face intently, fighting to keep his eyes open, not wanting to miss a second. He wraps his arms around y’s waist and fuckshard, chasing his own orgasm after Aziraphale’s, and buries himself deep inside with a groan._

_///_

_The windows are fogged over from their shared breath, with the brisk spring air outside. Half asleep and slumped over Crowley’s sticky body, feeling him play with his hair and stroke his back, Aziraphale finds that despite all of his anxiety and regrets, he is at peace._

_“If we don’t get up now,” says Crowley, his lips dragging against Aziraphale’s temple, “we will either end up arrested, late, or possibly a very embarrassing combination of the two.”_

_“The temple of my earthly vessel wants a nap.”_

_A horse-drawn cart rattles past, piloted by an aged farmer. _

_“Come on, angel. I’ve made myself a little too obvious already today.”_

_Aziraphale sighs, long-suffering, and reluctantly disentangles himself from Crowley’s long form; folded as it is at several awkward angles across the bench seat._

_“Fine.”_

_Crowley squeezes his knee._

_“I’ll make it up to you later.”_

_///_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1]  
[ Bieiris de Romans' courtly love poem ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bieiris_de_Romans%22%3E)  
[return to text]
> 
> If you find any typos etc, please let me know. I miss things often.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Kudos and comments are always appreciated. Come and yell at me on my [tumblr](https://lovelybydecay.tumblr.com/).


	3. Chapter 3

As memories go, it’s a cherished one-- but currently, completely unwelcome. Aziraphale’s face reddens where he stands. It hadn’t been the first time; it most certainly hadn’t been the last. That wasn’t it. It had not been a tryst borne of comfort or boredom or proximity. The demon Crowley had left an indelible mark on Aziraphale’s soul, yet the journey had been confusing and unstable, ending in a horrible twist of irony. The universe’s statement was clear; you will never know. You cannot hold onto anything. Love will be wrenched from you

He could find nothing but resentment and grief. The memories of Crowley’s face were marred by the stronger, violent image of his pained and lifeless face-- nothing more than a vessel, and yet the angel found he could not dissociate the two entities in his mind.

In the early morn, he leaves the sandy beach and the screaming gulls.

* * *

Aziraphale might not need the Heavenly Host, but his human body needs a sandwich, tea, and a shave. His curly flaxen hair has grown right out of control, falling in his eyes.

* * *

_I saw him fall the first time, and I saw him fall again; both times without ceremony. And none shall grieve, save one lone angel. One who was not originally equipped with a heart, yet acquired one nonetheless. The organ sprang from need and need alone, the need to feel and beat and care and ache._

* * *

There’s a community centre a little ways in, nestled in a shabby chunk of duplexes and shared gardens and abandoned bicycles and concrete. It’s nice. The building itself is a quonset, with spackley rock stuff on the sides and a blue roof. The door is white and the windows are barred. The bulletin boasts a morning meditation class, so he waits for the building to open.

A bright young woman with a terribly calm aura comes to unlock the building. She greets him with a smile, and an almost imperceptible once-over. She seems to conclude that he means her no harm. She gestures for him to enter the dark hallway.

“Hello,” she says. “Here for the class?”

“Erm, yes. I suppose so. I, ah--”

“Great! You can try out the first class for free. We’re a charity.” With a slender finger, she flips on the heavy light switches and they buzz to life. He follows her upstairs and he’s handed some pamphlets and drums his fingers for a few minutes.

The ceiling is high and the space is clean. She busiers herself with taking out a couple of chairs and putting her things away in the spare kitchen. There’s a service window and a stove inside that says _“NO COOKING” _in comic sans and the cupboards are chained and locked.

She finishes up and approaches Aziraphale with her hand outstretched. “Amanda*.”

“Ah-- Francis,” he replies, shaking her hand lightly.

There he goes.

Aziraphale holds kindness in him. It fills up the hole a little bit, he thinks. He’s wrong, but it feels better.

He sits on a bench in the sun and lets himself get angry. It only lasts a moment-- he’s angry about Crowley being angry about Aziraphale’s reducing their relationship to mere fraternization, he thinks. He’s wrong again. What he’s really angry about is how they were both lying-- the angel more than the reluctant devil. He’s angry that he only saw Crowley’s face in ecstasy a handful of times before the night closed in around them.

With his stiffening hand-- now plumper at the joints and creaky and overlaid with a cobweb of widening purple arteries*, he scratches his beard.

_“Hmm-- keep the scruff, angel,” _Crowley had said. He’d said it twice: once at a distance, across a thick wooden table in a dark tavern by a roaring fire. One of the first times he’d ‘switched off’, so to speak, and was unable to miracle his appearance into shape. Crowley liked it.

The second time he said it, it was whispered and it was Mayday and the moon was high and they were naked, wrapped together in a blanket under starlight.

_“Shooting star, Angel.” _Crowley mouthed at his ear, cold from the air. _“Make a wish.”_

_“I wish we weren’t so useless,” replies an Angel of the Lord who had voluntarily removed his own batteries._

_“Ah, well. There’s your trouble. You said your wish out loud.”_

* * *

“Sometimes I just want someone to be sad with.” Crowley, with the brutal honesty of a child.

“Hmm?”

“Do your lot even _get_ sad?”

The angel feels all the tears he’d shed, over murdered innocents and holy crusades; in secret and over his chronic and constipated inability to revolt. Over how he was supposed to be a supernova in a suit of skin, here only to observe, and yet his eyes filled with the hot, briny assuredness that his mission was lost to him. Water of life filtered through an all too-human body.

“Do you mourn?” Crowley continued. “It’s all so fragile, but you see enough of it crumble and float away on the wind that eventually…” his fingers drummed out a beat on an unseen keyboard in the air as he trailed off. “Can _we_ be mourned? Can a star _be_ mourned?”

“You always did ask too many questions,” Aziraphale says, and smiles sadly. He gets a scowl that’s a little too hurt, and so he kisses Crowley on the cheek and feels his warm skin and the corner of his eye crinkle under his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for such a short chapter! i still really wanted to update since it's been so long since the last one. 
> 
> thank you for reading, please let me know what you thought in the comments if you can! xoxo

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Kudos and comments are always appreciated. Come and yell at me on my [tumblr](https://lovelybydecay.tumblr.com/).


End file.
